


The Art of Names

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Read My Lips [8]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Any, any, ASL short-hand for names of friends/self.</i> Evan Lorne teaches Rodney ASL.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Names

"Wait, what was that?" Rodney asked.  
  
Lorne paused. "What was what?"  
  
"That thing you did with your hands."  
  
Lorne fixed him with an unimpressed stare. "I'm talking with my hands."  
  
Rodney rolled his eyes. "That sign. You didn't spell my name." His ASL vocabulary was pretty much at a first-grade level at this point, but he was getting really good at reading fast finger-spelling and finger-spelling himself when he didn't know a word.  
  
Lorne winced. "Ah, your name-sign. At least, the one John assigned for you."  
  
Rodney had researched Deaf Culture etiquette with exacting thoroughness when John first joined the expedition, so he knew how to get John's attention and to speak normally because John was better at reading lips at normal speed than slow, exaggerated speed (although Rodney talked faster than most people), and also about the giving of name-signs. "I thought people only got name-signs if someone was close to them."  
  
Lorne shrugged. "John had to assign a lot of people working names for his reference, or else he'd be spelling names all day."  
  
"What does my name-sign mean?" Rodney asked and immediately regretted it. He knew that name-signs were created based on someone's prominent attributes, either physical or personality-wise. Whenever Lorne signed Rodney's name, his finger hovered near his mouth.  
  
"Smile," Lorne said.  
  
"Huh." That wasn't what Rodney had been expecting. Big-mouth, maybe. Kids at school had teased him for being a loud-mouth. Well, that wasn't something John would have noticed about him. Chatty, maybe? Complainer? Kids had also teased him for having a crooked mouth. "What about my smile?"  
  
Lorne looked deeply uncomfortable. "He likes your smile, obviously."  
  
Rodney knew Lorne was making a pretty big sacrifice of his free time, tutoring Rodney privately in ASL on top of the evening classes he taught for members of the expedition in general, and that Lorne hated being third-wheel on dates possibly even more than Rodney hated having him there. He didn't think Lorne was homophobic. He was pretty sure Lorne's overblown sense of interpreter ethics and professionalism made him feel like he was a little too enmeshed in John's personal life when he was on dates with John and Rodney, translating flirty small talk (although Lorne had a very pleasant voice, and he could do flirty very well). "Right. What's your name-sign?"  
  
Lorne demonstrated.  
  
Rodney imitated it carefully. "What does it mean?"  
  
"It's my working name-sign," Lorne said. "Blue paintbrush. Because I have blue eyes and like to paint."  
  
"Do you have another name-sign?" Rodney asked, puzzled.  
  
"My sister is deaf, and she gave me a name-sign when we were pretty young. Only my family uses it." Lorne always looked uncomfortable when he talked about his personal life, like he wasn't supposed to admit he had one.  
  
"What does John's name-sign mean?" Rodney asked. He knew it had the letter J in it somewhere.  
  
"I only know his working name-sign," Lorne said. He demonstrated. "Basically it means 'The Hair'."

Rodney hummed thoughtfully. "Huh. Okay. That makes sense. Will he ever tell me his family name-sign, do you think?"  
  
"I don't know. It wouldn't hurt to ask," Lorne said. "Now, are you ready to try again?"  
  
Rodney insisted that he needed to know important physics and math terms on top of his toddler conversational vocabulary, which was hard for Lorne, who'd been a surveying major/art minor in college. "Okay, fine. Let's do this."  
  
It was polite, for Lorne to speak while he signed, not just for hearing people but also for John (and Rodney knew that because John could speak it was very unusual that he didn't speak for hearing people while he signed, but there was something more to that, and he wasn't going to ask). Because John didn't speak aloud, however, Lorne made Rodney practice with signs and silence.  
  
"Wait, what was that sign?"  
  
"You need to be more specific than _that sign_."  
  
"The one between allow and mission."  
  
"Oh. Elizabeth's name-sign. _The Queen._ "  
  
"What's Zelenka's?"  
  
Lorne demonstrated. " _Swearing._ "  
  
The lesson devolved from there, Rodney asking for all of the name-signs John had assigned for various expedition members, and Lorne teaching and translating them. Rodney learned a lot about John's sense of humor, and he and Lorne shared some laughter, but the question burned at the back of his mind. Would John ever share his family name-sign with Rodney?  
  
Later, when John came by, Rodney eagerly showed off the new signs Lorne had taught him. John's smile, bright and pleased, made all of the frustration worth it. (Lorne was a patient teacher, but Rodney wasn't always a very patient student, and his lessons with Lorne were at the end of the day when they were both very tired.)  
  
John leaned in and kissed him, and after he pulled back, Rodney said, signing carefully, "The names you've picked for everybody are pretty good, by the way. I like Ronon's the best." His was _Wookie_.  
  
John said with his hands, "This is my name. My family name. My first tutor gave it to me."  
  
Rodney tried to imitate, fumbled.  
  
John reached out, guided his hands gently.  
  
"What does it mean?"  
  
John spelled it slowly. "Numbers like stars."  
  
"That was kind of prophetic, wasn't it?" Rodney said, spelling _prophetic_ and making a mental note to ask Lorne about that. "You using numbers to bring yourself out here, into the distant stars."  
  
"Bringing me to you," John said, and kissed him again.  
  
All the next day, every time John spoke to Zelenka, Rodney couldn't help but snicker, and he burst out laughing when Zelenka, in a fit of frustration, exploded into a flurry of cursing in Czech and stormed out of the lab again.


End file.
